Another Shot From Marina Bay

The entire complex at Marina Sands will just blow you away with visuals...hardly a place where you can't get an amazing photo...

Nice Alley Way in Florence

I liked the light and "emptiness" of this alley in Florence...

Just Back From Singapore and Off To Bangkok

Ya, I know...I have been VERY bad about making posts the past few days...I will try my best to not let that happen again. I had to go to Singapore for my annual Colonoscopy...arrrgh....all is fine, though!!

Tika and I were able to finally see the laser light show at Marina Bay where I took this photo. Hats off to the architects of this place....they really did an amazing job of shaping this city with some amazing buildings, and they still are not finished. Just behind the Hotel, there is an entire new area being developed with some really wild looking "space age" buildings...can't wait till that area is finished...

I am off to Bangkok this afternoon, so will make a couple of posts now to fill the next two days...see you back here live on Monday...

Twins

Oops....missed a day yesterday....just too busy to find the time to make a post. I try to post a new photo every week day, but it is not always easy to do.

I took this photo a couple of years ago. I was on a night dive when I heard someone clanking on their tank...at first, I couldn't see what the diver was looking at, and then I saw there were two Ghost Pipe Fish...getting a photo of the two of them was tricky as one of them would always turn in a different direction, but I was finally able to catch them turning in the same direction...

Inside The Pantheon

I have been posting a bunch of photos from Italy the past week or so....the reason is that I just recently "found" these photos which I thought had been lost with my Drobo failure. I had to go back and "re-work" the photos as my last versions (which I had processed before) were lost with my Drobo. So here is a shot from inside the Pantheon which was going through some renovations where I was there. It was really crowded inside, so in order to get shot with no people in it, I had to shoot UP...this limited my compositions and it was tricky to find something that worked and looked nice...

Colored Towers

Have a good weekend?

This is an HDR, but the colors are real...

Florence

Here's a little hint for you when processing your night photos...

I find that most people tend to make their photos too "warm" by moving the white balance sliders either in LR or Adobe RAW more to the yellow side. Well, the lights on the buildings are usually warm lights, and if you move the white balance sliders to the warm side, the buildings take on a very "orange" look to them, and the sky will not look natural either. So, instead, try moving the sliders to the "cooler" side, and you will get a much nicer effect on the skies and buildings...also add a bit of magenta as well...

Have a great weekend!! See ya on Monday!!

I Diverge

I made a post today on Google+ about art in galleries. You know the painting I am talking about, right? The ones that look like anyone could paint?...the ones that look like just random lines of paint or splatter?...the ones where you wonder why on Earth they are sitting in a fancy gallery and are listed at millions of dollars?...you see the philosophical pondering the meaning of the painting...what was the artist trying to say? What is the meaning? You know what I am talking about?

Can a photograph do the same thing? I took this photo in Italy a couple of years ago. I was really trying to take a photo of the bulletin board where hundreds of small posters were hung and then ripped off...I have a friend that takes photos of such kind of walls, and has done an exhibition of his photos of "ripped faces"....so, I wanted to show my buddy this photo of an interesting bulletin board...but this photo ended up being a topic of discussion with some of my friends...they sounded like those people in an art gallery trying to decipher the meaning of a painting...I wanted to laugh when I heard them talking because I had no hidden agenda or meaning when I took this photograph...I just thought it was cool the way in which the light hit the wall, and the shadows....but maybe there is more to this photograph than meets the eye...hehe...

Another "Lost" File From Cinque Terre

Here is another shot that I thought had been lost...is this a cool little town or what? I would love to wake up every morning with a view from one of those houses on the cliff...ah, the life of some.

Cinque Terre

I was going through some of my older photos last night, and was very pleasantly surprised to find some photos I took in Italy two summers ago were still in my files....I thought I had lost all of them when my Drobo failed. I did lose ALL my photos from Venice, but I had most of my photos from Rome, Florence and Cinque Terre...of course, all the files that I had worked on for hours were lost, so I had to re-work the photo below...speaking of which, the photo below is actually a panoramic consisting of eight vertical images...I often go back and re-work some of my older stuff. I have learned so many new things in the past few years, that it is often good to go back and start from scratch with some of my older images. Some of the stuff I did years ago, I wonder now what I was thinking back then...hehe...

Like An Aquarium

Well, of course, the real ocean is going to look like an aquarium, but not everywhere...but head to Raja Ampat, and it looks like an aquarium on steroids most everywhere you go...

Published in Travel + Leisure Magazine

I am kind of late in reporting this, but the October edition of Travel + Leisure (Southeast Asia) Magazine used 5 of my photos for a story on Papua. The reason I am mentioning it now, three months later, is that I just received a copy of the magazine today. I posted 4 out of the 5 they used below...I didn't post the 5th one, because personally, I don't really like the photo...it was one of my early HDR's, and I look at some of my early HDR's and wonder what I was thinking...but if you really want to see it, let me know, and I will post it...but really, it is a pretty sorry excuse for an HDR...in any case, getting published, no matter how many times it happens, is always exciting...

Have a great weekend!!

Before and After HDR

This is terminal three at the Singapore Airport. I think the airport in Singapore is perhaps the best airport in the world...If Tom Hanks had been stuck in this airport, (for that movie, Terminal) he could have had a decent life...I could live there.

In any case, I wanted to show you the "before and after" of this shot. I took a 5-shot HDR of this scene. The bottom shot (before) is my middle exposure straight out of the camera, and the top version is after Photomatix and Photoshop.

Like A Painting

I have been working on a few images for an art auction next month. This is one of the images I have submitted...it is iconic Jakarta...the Bajai. I love the way the textures (I used 4 of them for this image) change the entire look to the photograph and turns it into more of a painting or work of art than a photograph. I printed this large on canvas, and I think it will look cool in someone's office...I hope, anyway.

Got The Blues

If you use Adobe Lightroom, you will already know how powerful that program can be for editing. These days, I rarely use Photoshop as most of my editing can be done in Lightroom alone. This image was processed in Lightroom. I was just messing around with the color sliders until I got the colors I wanted. The "before" version is at the bottom. The sky was really unusual during the sunset...it was very cloudy, and the sun was setting in the opposite direction reflecting light onto the clouds. I knew that I could bring out the color of the clouds at the end of the pier, but it took messing around with the color sliders to do that...

Robinson Crusoe

Last time I was in Papua, I had the opportunity to fly. I used to be a helicopter pilot, so once flying gets in your blood, it is impossible to get rid of the urge to "get up" again. My buddy, Max, has a "Drifter" which is an experimental aircraft...with an open cockpit, floats and two seats, it is a blast to fly. We took off from the water right in front of the resort, and flew out over the reefs.

This little island is one of many little "Robinson Crusoe" islands spread through out Raja Ampat. I kayaked to this little one where Max has built a small shelter to spend the night....talk about having your own private island....pretty damn cool.

Taking photos from the air was not as easy as I thought...especially with a prime lens. I switched back n forth between my 35mm and 18mm lenses....it got tough as the light started to go away, and since I was sitting in the back seat, it was difficult to get a shot unobstructed..but man, what a great day of flying...can't wait to get back to do some more....we saw Dugongs, dolphins, whales and Mantas all in one flight....unreal.

Happy Friday, and New Article Posted

Happy Friday! Hope you all have a terrific weekend...go out and GET LOST...

I wrote a short article about my trip to China this past Christmas...it was published on Steve Huff's website...go over there and have a read, and let me know what you think...

HERE IS THE LINK...

I left my photo that I was going to post today at home...so here is a nice sunset photo from the archives...

What I See VS. What My Wife Sees

What did I notice when walking through the back side of the Botanical Gardens in Bogor? I saw an interesting stack of old flower pots, I saw some broken bamboo randomly leaning up against the wall next to the pots, I liked the randomness of the piles of pots, and most of all, I noticed a very colorful wall of algae growth and other textures, and the ground was also full of color and texture...I saw the potential of the colors being enhanced even more in Photoshop, later. I saw what would look like a nice painting...

My wife saw an old beat up wall and some junk, and wondered why the hell I would take a photo of it...

Us photographers just think differently, heh?